Film crew begins shooting scenes in Everett

EVERETT — It’s not every day you find actress Parker Posey strolling along Rucker Avenue.

But crowds of fans got a brush with Hollywood dozens of times Monday morning during the first day of shooting of the independent film, “The Architect.”

Pleased with the beautiful fall weather Monday, the movie crew repeatedly filmed a scene in which Posey’s character, Mrs. Stone, walked down Rucker and crossed 14th Street with two friends pushing baby strollers.

In the completed film, the scene might take up all of 30 seconds — a minute tops, said Steve McGehee, a camera operator from Seattle. That’s how movie-making works. Take after take.

The $2 million film directed by Jonathan Parker involves the Stones, a couple who employ a well-known architect to build their dream home. As the movie’s publicist describes it, the architect’s “soaring ideas are matched only by his ego.” Mrs. Stone doesn’t realize at first that the architect is building his own dream house, not theirs.

On Monday morning, Austin Weaver, with Turn-Key Maintenance of Everett, was completing repairs to a house just south of the film location. The film crew asked him to keep his table saw quiet during takes.

“I told them if they need an extra with a saw, I’m available,” Weaver said. “It’s pretty neat that we have another movie being made here.”

This is the second movie filmed in Everett in less than a year. In May, a crew shot an action drama, “Seven Minutes.” People working on “The Architect” said filming in Everett is expected to take about a month.

All day, an Everett police officer kept traffic out of the filming area.

Neighbors along Rucker, between 13th and 14th streets, were out Sunday afternoon to get ready by mowing lawns and moving their cars off the street.

Larry Wold, 72, who lives a block away, said the film company left fliers on porches in the neighborhood, asking for cooperation from homeowners in removing their Halloween decorations during the Monday filming.

Unlike homes in the rest of the neighborhood, houses on the block along Rucker showed no signs of Halloween. Homeowners took down orange lights and hid their pumpkins. At one house, a big wooden witch was taken down.

Crews arrived before dawn Monday to set up lights and electrical equipment.

Joanne Chadwick, who watched the activity with Wold, said she was pleased to see Everett getting some attention from filmmakers.

“It’s pretty cool to see people bringing their money to town,” she said.

Everett Community College students Hannah Allen and Kayla Martin, both 18, watched the action from a half-block down 14th Street.

“This isn’t something you see every day,” Martin said. “It kind of makes you proud of the city.”

Posey, who is perhaps best known for her roles in Christopher Guest’s comedies such as “Best in Show” and “Waiting for Guffman,” is joined in the cast by Eric McCormack of TV’s “Will and Grace” fame and James Frain, who played Thomas Cromwell on Showtime’s “The Tudors” and also played a vampire on “True Blood.” McCormack plays Posey’s husband; Frain is the architect.

Many of the freelance film crew members are from the Seattle-Everett area, said Anna Lee Dumas of the location team.

Some scenes will be shot in Seattle, Dumas said, but primary filming will be in Everett until about Thanksgiving.

Several homes in north Everett are to be used, as well as a stretch of Mukilteo Boulevard, some spots in Mukilteo and in an empty warehouse, said Sean Straub, coordinator of Experience Everett, the tourism outfit working with the film company.

North Everett was chosen for the movie because it has a charming feel, especially during fall, Straub said. “The historic character and quality of life that north Everett exudes were large factors in why it was chosen as a primary location,” Straub said.

The film is scheduled to be released in 2014, however an exact date has not yet been determined.